Not Alone
The road to pregnancy wasn’t easy for me. It was full of early bleeding, possible miscarriages, empty gestational sacs and hard-to-find heartbeats.
But it wasn’t as hard as not being believed by my medical team.
During my pregnancies, first with my son, Harrison, who is now almost five; and then with Harper, who just celebrated her third birthday, I suffered from perinatal anxiety: postpartum depression’s quieter, secretive sister. She’s hard to get treatment for, and even harder to get anyone in a white lab coat to believe you have it. After all, they only affect 15 percent of all pregnant women in the United States every year. In contrast, 70 percent of moms will get the “baby blues,” a cute name for a debilitating condition.
Perinatal anxiety is debilitating, too. I got a positive pregnancy test and immediately started bleeding: rivulets of blood in my underwear at my husband and my celebratory dinner. A few days later, I woke up to blood all over the sheets. I knew what that meant.
At the hospital, the doctors were anything but reassuring. “It’s probably a miscarriage, here’s a pamphlet,” one doctor coldly spit out, like she couldn’t be bothered with me until I was for sure pregnant.
My son didn’t have a heartbeat that was easily spotted on a Doppler until I was 16 weeks pregnant. I bled heavily and suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum, the supersized cousin of morning sickness, the whole pregnancy.
I still can’t decide if the biggest battle was between the worries in my head and myself or between myself and my doctors.
I would stay up all night, researching stillbirth statistics, and training myself on how to spot the hidden signs of childhood cancers. I figured if I was going to get to have my son earthside, I wasn’t going to get to have him for long. I even put a tiny black funeral suit in my Amazon cart, just in case.
Every time I went to the doctor, I was treated as almost their comedic relief for the day: the epitome of the nervous new mom. No one ever said, “this might be a mental health issue,” or took me the slightest bit seriously. They would ask, “so, what do you think is wrong with the baby today?” and then start guffawing.
At 32 weeks pregnant, I was diagnosed with a serious pregnancy complication: polyhydramnios, in which I had an excess of amniotic fluid-several pounds of fluid on top of my unborn son. Even then, I was flatly told, “if you go into labor on your own and your water breaks, his cord will come with it and he’ll strangle and die.”
Not even a “hey, we’re sorry, or “this happens sometimes.”
So I was convinced every day I was pregnant was going to be his last day here. Every day, for five long weeks until I had a c section, I was barely breathing. During the birth, the vacuum they were using to try and get him out filled up with water and broke. He didn’t cry at first. He spent time in the NICU. It was one horrible moment after another
Then, nine months later, I got pregnant again. I had the same bleeding with my daughter. The same excess fluid. But this time, “worried mom” had turned into “advocate mom” and I demanded things. An amnioreduction to handle the extra fluid. Multiple appointments to check her heartbeat, her size, how her lungs worked. Most importantly, a counselor and access to mental health medication upon delivery, to stave off the bout of postpartum depression that was headed my way.
To anyone going through perinatal anxiety, I see you. I believe you. The way you feel is real and valid. You know your truth, and you are not alone.
~Laura Davis